


established frame

by werepope (quiteparadise)



Series: Not Another Advent 2016 [1]
Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fai is Yuui and Yuui is Fai, M/M, You know what I mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 14:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8848207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiteparadise/pseuds/werepope
Summary: When Yuui visits Fai a day early, he intends to be the one doing the surprising.





	

Yuui and Fai thought they’d never be apart, but life is never as simple as one imagines it to be at six or sixteen. Reality gets in the way. They stayed together through college, until Fai decided he wanted to pursue his masters degree and Yuui, who’d already had enough of school to last a few lifetimes strung together, decided having a job was better than having a job and exams.

Now pushing at the last boundary of their early thirties, Yuui is in Atlanta, doing nothing short of cookery magic to offset Paula Deen and a couple hundred years of bias against southern cuisine, while Fai withers away in the suburbs of Philadelphia, copy editing and getting a little more harebrained every time they see each other. Which, not counting Skype calls, isn’t often.

So for the sake of preserving what little mental stability they can claim between them, Yuui scrapes together all the good graces and vacation hours he can get and manages to get a week off, smacking up against the holiday if not spot on. He flies into Pennsylvania on a Tuesday morning, rents a car, and uses his years of kitchen experience to curse his way through the chaos of commuter traffic out to Bala Cynwyd.

Fai bought a house two years ago, proudly texting picture after picture of all its charms, and Yuui spots it even without the aid of the GPS. There’s no mistaking the sagging front steps, the decades of lead-heavy paint peeling off in chunks. Fai had called it a fixer-upper. The listing agent had deemed it “as is.” Yuui thought it looked like a hazard. In person, it looks like more of a disaster, a project for someone far more hands-on than Fai, like a demolitions expert.

But Fai has made efforts, however trivial. There is a bird feeder on a stand in the yard, a windchime hanging from the porch, the remains of a flower garden meandering along the walk, half hidden under the dregs of the last snow shoveling. And most importantly, under the pot of a long-desiccated geranium by the front door, a key.

Yuui told Fai he was coming, of course. There’d be no point visiting if Fai had to spend half his time working, even from home. But it also wouldn’t be half as fun if he was expected, so his six days off became five in the telling, and if he’s arrived early enough to get the jump on Fai while he’s still in bed, he’ll count the whole trip as a win, whatever follows.

Shucking off his shoes inside, Yuui can see evidence of the work done to keep the house from falling in on itself is more obvious: a military-grade trunk open near the foot of the stairs is filled with tools; a tidy pile of scrap wood and a paint-splattered ladder propped up beside it; the lingering scent of sawdust and paint; the slide of polished hardwood under his socked feet.

It only takes a moment with his breath held to hear Fai deeper in the house, knocking things about in the cabinets, hopefully using the french press that Yuui gave him for his birthday and not still resorting to instant. It’s a travesty, it really is. If the two of them weren’t physically identical in almost every way, it would be hard to believe they were related at all.

Yuui shifts his weight forward hesitantly, sliding on the balls of his feet, testing for telltale squeaks. If he hovers too long here, or takes too long creeping down the hall, Fai will fall over him in his pre-caffeinated fugue. But the floor is solid, not a single nightingale hidden between the boards, and Yuui is long-legged. He makes it from doorway to doorway in just a few seconds.

The last time he saw the kitchen was just after Fai purchased the house, giving him an excited Skype tour. He’d been especially pleased about the behemoth of a farmhouse sink, a massive porcelain and cast iron thing that would have been a boasting feature if it hadn’t been mint green, a throwback to a time that was better left forgotten. Yuui had told him he’d have to do dishes in heels, to complete the look, and Fai had swung the tablet around to show him the cabinets, also green.

They aren’t green anymore. It looks like someone has taken initiative and gutted the whole kitchen, torn out every bit of ugly and replaced it with a sea of pretty white. Only the sink has been permitted to stay, charming after all when put in context.

Fai must have hired a decorator. There’s no way his brother, someone who apparently wears a bright blue kimono to putz around the house, picked anything approaching tasteful. Yet there he is, a gaudy cliche in his lovely, sun-bathed kitchen, hunched over in what looks like prayer to the chugging coffee machine.

Yuui stretches to take another sliding step, get himself around the table so he can spring up properly, and Fai makes a noise like he’s just gotten the wind knocked out of him, a big rush of breath followed by a shaky, desperate inhale. Caught halfway between the door and his destination, with his brother finally in full view, Yuui freezes. Fai grips the counter to hold himself upright. The man on his knees in front of Fai, less than half visible behind the curtain of his open robe, makes an obscenely wet sound.

The table, Yuui finds out, is not a cheap reproduction of an antique style. It and the chairs are all entirely solid, well made, and hurt a great deal when he crashes into them, yelling all the way down to prevent overhearing anything else he’ll need to scrub out of his brain.

The floor is real too, not snap together laminate with forgiving padding beneath. It’s reclaimed spruce salvaged from an old Pentecostal church in rural New York and painstakingly re-installed in Fai’s home using only the original nail holes. The cabinets were all custom made. The coffee table in the living room, too, where Yuui puts his feet up and ices his head while listening to Fai gush, beaming, about his handyman turned live-in boyfriend.

“I don’t live here,” Kurogane barks from upstairs, followed by another round of stomping.

Fai rolls his eyes and doesn’t lower his voice even a tick. “Yes he does.”

Yuui lets him peel the ice pack from his head to prod at the bruise on his cheek, clicking his tongue and looking really undeservedly disapproving for someone who got caught having sex not ten minutes ago.

“You didn’t tell me you were dating anyone,” Yuui says, sounding less defensive every time, more accusing. “How could you not tell me you moved in with someone?”

Fai’s smile, when it ticks down from the ceiling onto Yuui, is downright smug. “I wanted to surprise you.”


End file.
